Intensive Agricultural - Crop cultivation & livestock rearing systems using high labor & capital relative to size of landholding

• Labor is required to plant and harvest crops and raise livestock, and money is needed to purchase seeds, inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides, and equipment - aka farmers who practice this need to work very hard and put in a lot of effort

• Commercial Agriculture: Farming oriented exclusively toward the production of agricultural commodities for sale in the market; costly due to more machine use and hiring workers, MDCs

  • Market Gardening: Small-scale system where farmer plants one-few acres producing a mixture of vegetables and fruits; Ideal topography: flat to hilly & fertile soils; farmer owns land & sells crops at local markets; moderate climate

  • Plantation/Monocropping: Large land used for capital-intensive production of a single crop to sell in the global marketplace

    • Located in Tropical and Subtropical climates - Examples: Sugarcane, bananas, coffee, or pineapples

    • Land usually owned by a wealthy landowner or a large corporation that hires a farmer to manage & live on land

      • Produces a two-class plantation society of wealthy landowners and poor workers

    • Small plantation owners use a mix of family labor and hired seasonal labor to plant and harvest the crops

  • Grain: Specializes in production of cereal grains; has use of large farms, machinery, pesticides, and GMO

    • Sometimes considered extensive because inputs per unit of land are low

    • No single farming regions but multiple grain regions, called “belts”

• Truck Farming: A scaled-up type of market gardening, more land, less crop diversity, & stronger orientation toward distant markets

  • Concentrated on a single product, such as grapes, olives, oranges, apples, lettuce, or tomatoes

  • Participate in cooperative marketing arrangements, pooling their resources to get their produce to market more cheaply

• Mixed Crop/Livestock: Based on cultivation of cereal grains, root crops, & the rearing of herd livestock; semiarid climates

  • Cereal Grains: Seeds from variety of grasses globally; wheat & barley (ME), sorghum & millet (Africa), oats & corn (Americas)

  • Root Crops: Vegetables that form below ground and must be dug at maturity, such as cassava, potatoes, and yams

  • Cash Crops: Crops grown to be sold for profit > used to feed the farm family &  livestock:  cotton, flax, hemp, coffee, & tobacco

  • Peasants: Small-scale farmers that own their fields, rely on family labor, & produce for family and for sale in the market

  • Livestock pull the plow, provide milk, meat, & wool; and produce manure used to fertilize the fields

  • Irrigation helps support this system, however most modern technologies are beyond the financial reach of peasant farmers

• Paddy Rice: System of wet rice cultivation on small level fields bordered by dikes; fields are flooded for ¾ of the growing season

  • Practiced typically by peasant farmers in humid tropical and subtropical climates

• Livestock Fattening: Animal feeding using feedlots to fatten livestock (cattle & hogs) for slaughter & processing for market

  • Feedlots - Fenced enclosure used for livestock feeding to limit livestock movement & associated weight loss

  • Humid continental & humid subtropical climate zones-Slaughterhouses built near feedlots creating meat-producing regions

  • Creates places like Corn Belt (US) where food is raised specifically for livestock - considered mixed crop/livestock farming

• Dairy Farming: Specializes in the breeding, rearing, and utilization of dairy producing livestock

  • Farms close to urban areas = milk and farms far away from urban areas = butter, cheese, or processed milk

  • Many have adopted feedlot systems

  • Traditional farms: Everywhere except tropical wet and dry zones and arid zones/Feedlot farms: semi arid climate zones

Extensive Agriculture: Crop cultivation & livestock systems that uses less labor or monetary investment to farm

• Relies on natural soil fertility & climate → Farmers work with the environment > trying to overcome to boost productivity

• Subsistence Agriculture: Food production mainly for consumption by the farming family and local community > for sale in the market; requires high levels of labor to put in effort over machine use, LDCs

  • Shifting Cultivation: Use of land until it becomes less productive → shifting to new land through slash-and-burn

    • Slash-And-Burn/Swidden: Cutting small plots, burning cuttings to clear & release nutrients, then planting in ash

    • Crops grown in tropical climates and are maize, beans, yams, and rice/Cycle restarts on old land after 10-20 yrs

    • Intercropping: Planting multiple crops together → reduces chance of crop losses & gives farmer a varied diet

  • Nomadic Herding: Breeding & rearing herd livestock by following seasonal rainfall movement to areas of open pasturelands

    • Some move transhumance (vertical pattern of lowlands to highlands) and some horizontally (following rainfall)

    • occurs in areas that are unsuited for crop cultivation/found in arid or colder zones of the Eastern Hemisphere

    • Closely associated with ethnic & indigenous tribal groups so type of livestock herding are important/few materials

  • Livestock Ranching: Using extensive tracts of land to rear herds of livestock & sell as meat/hides/wool; semi arid zone, COMMERCIAL

    • Has a fixed home, ranches, & operates as individuals/individual families; only raises cattle (tropical) & sheep (midlatitude)